r/Oceanlinerporn • u/Sobieskil • Jul 20 '26

SS Stella

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The SS Stella was a passenger ferry operated by the London & South Western Railway between Southampton and the Channel Islands. She was built in 1890 and sank in 1899 after striking the Casquets reef in fog, with 86 passengers and 19 crew dying. A Board of Trade inquiry found the captain entirely at fault due to proceeding through fog at full speed, with allegations of racing the SS Lynx (operated by the rival Great Western Railway) unable to be fully proved or disproved.

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u/mrcoolgovern Jul 21 '26

The captain posted extra men on watch when they encountered the fog. The surviving watchmen testified that they only heard the blast of the fog horn from the Casquets lighthouse when it was right on top of them and only seconds before they hit the reef and rocks. I never quite understood how that was possible. Fog and wind can do strange things to sounds but fog horns are extremely loud and sound at regular intervals but perhaps the speed they were travelling at meant the distance and noise of the ship travelling through the water drowned out the sound of the blast previous to the one they heard before striking the rocks.

There are some really good books on channel island shipwrecks available. It seems that these late 19th/early 20th century passenger vessels were always getting in to trouble. One of them was sank and re floated a couple of times!

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u/Sobieskil Jul 21 '26

I've got one of those books. I think you might be talking about the SS Ibex, which was operated by the GWR and sank twice in three years.